The Ties That Bind
by Engar
Summary: A story about lessons learned, and how they affect the bonds that hold a family together. As a new threat appears, along with a stranger who might be more vigilante than villain, can Robin trust his own intuitions and keep his team safe?


It had been a mistake.

Five days after the defeat of Trigon a reliable source – as reliable as any of the shady connections Robin maintained – had implied that Slade was planning on a return to Jump City. There were purchases being made from hi-tech organisations and, while these purchases had a dozen legal outcomes, another possible outcome would be a Slade-Bot.

The team still hadn't quite recovered from their battle – it's not every day you see your planet ripped apart and made the new throne for Satan himself – but Robin had made a promise. That if Slade ever showed his face in Jump City again he _would_ face the full fury of the Law.

So, Robin cut their break short, recalled Starfire and Beast Boy from their trips, and the team took to the streets. For an entire week they had run down every lead, staked out every business, explored caverns and warehouses and clock-towers in the hopes of finding Slade's new base.

The team started off tired but by the end of it they were all exhausted. It took three weeks for Robin to call off the search and even then it took Starfire falling off a building while tracking down a completely routine couple of bank robbers. Robin himself caught the crooks before they could make their get-away but his success was tainted by the sight of Cyborg holding an unconscious Starfire in his arms, bawling out Robin for his damned quests.

Like he said, it had been a mistake.

Now, Robin stood upon the roof of the Tower, gazing at Jump City. It was lit up in amber and gold in the setting of the sun and, from his distant perspective, peaceful. The occasional car flitted across the roads. Groups of people strolled the board-walks and boulevards. Crime, if it occurred at all, went silently through the streets.

It was quiet. Too quiet, truth be told.

But how was he to explain that to a team he had just led through an exhausting goose-chase?

For that matter, how could he be sure that what he felt, in the pit of his gut, wasn't the same obsession that had led him to search for Slade? How could he be sure of his instincts?

The fading sun held no answers. Robin held his vigil in silence, waiting for inspiration, feeling no hope at all.

* * *

_She_ sat in an open plan restaurant near the centre of the city, polishing off the last of a rare steak and watching the flies rush towards a discreetly placed bug-zapper. The restaurant was busy, filled with young up-and-comers and old well-to-dos, but she held a table by herself by deference of personality. She listened to the conversations buzzing around her, and when she caught the word 'Titans' she would smile contently.

Her associate arrived a few minutes early, awkward in his suit and tie, and he visibly stiffened when a waiter appeared at his shoulder and offered to take his thick black coat. He refused with a swift shake of the head and, seating himself opposite from her, stared apprehensively at the remains of her steak.

"You said seven, right?"

She nodded.

"Ah, I thought maybe you had said six.. What with you finishing your meal.."

She smiled demurely, and shook her head. The restaurant, she explained, was slightly out of his price range. Though he was welcome to join her in a coffee. She nodded to a waiter that her associate hadn't noticed – he flinched when the man appeared – and ordered herself and her companion two black coffees.

"Think you could Irish up that coffee, friend?" asked her associate, but if the waiter heard him he gave no sign of recognition.

She enquired as to whether everything was in order.

"Hmm?" The man, turning from his irate stare at the back of the waiter, blinked and nodded. "All taken care of. The tech-boys have all the parts they requested, and I have a friend running interference. We should be safe from you know who."

She implied that that safety was only temporary. Her plans, after all, would soon attract the attention of 'you know who', as her associate had so deftly put it. That _was_ the plan, in a manner of speaking.

The coffee arrived. Her associate drunk his in quick nervous gulps. She sipped her coffee slowly, enjoying the rich warm taste.

"'m glad you know what you're doing," admitted her associate. "This could get hot."

She nodded. Her associate finished his coffee and stood up stiffly, glancing around.

"Best be off, I'm stickin' out like a sore thumb."

She thanked him for her time and, as he strode away as quickly as he could, noticed with good humour that he had avoided paying for the coffee. Criminals were, she thought, such reliable people. When someone always acts in their best interest, one must only insure that your best interests align with theirs. She had been working on such balancing acts for her whole life.

As she finished her coffee, in the gentle warmth of the enclosing evening, another fly drew too close to the light and, with a crackle, was brought down in flames. There was a price for flying too close to the sun. There was always a price.

But the rewards. The rewards outstripped all else.

She listened to the buzz of the city and smiled, already drawing up her plans to destroy it.

* * *

The sun was setting when his coach drew into Jump City, and he stumbled from one stuffy heat to another with a hold all swinging from his shoulders. His ticket read Adam Smith, and that was the name he was born to, but it wasn't the one he thought of when he looked in the mirror.

Not that he had been looking in mirrors recently.

As he walked through the city, pausing only to gaze, with a faint wonder, at the towering blocks of glass and steel, Adam projected an air of solitude. Hood of his grey top drawn down, he was a shadow with the suggestion of green eyes and the occasional strand of raven black hair. The set of his shoulders and the strike of his sneakers on the side-walk seemed to keep others away from him.

He walked as a hole in the crowd. No shoulders touched his own.

Going by instructions on a much-folded print-out, Adam's feet moved from the light and easy commercial district through the more run-down areas, where more shops closed early and more windows were boarded up and scrawled with poor graffiti. He began to pick up, glancing warily from side to side, the suggestion of gang territory.

Then, for no particularly obvious reason, Adam turned into a dark alley and strolled into the shadows. The alley ended twenty feet down, in a mess of plastic bags and overturned garbage cans. He stopped, hands deep in the pockets of his grease-stained jeans, and glanced over his shoulder.

Two figures, both at least eighteen and well-muscled, were blocking out the street lights.

"Got the time, buddy?" Said one, Adam wasn't sure which one. They started to move towards him.

Adam Smith was sixteen and while well-built for his age the fact remained that he was sixteen. He stood a good few inches below six feet and was dwarfed by the size of the hold-all that hung from his shoulders. He was not an incredibly daunting figure.

But, then, neither was Robin.

"I certainly do," replied Adam easily, bringing his right hand up and pulling back his sleeve to reveal a gleaming digital watch, and suddenly he was angry again. All over again, that fresh red anger was running through his system. Hate, as an emotion, was easy to tap into. "Seven thirty pee em."

"Pee em, eh?" The figure on the right turned to the figure on the left, the two moving slowly, easily towards him, "You hear that? This guys a Brit!"

"Don't like Brits.."

Adam leaned back against a trash can. Had he cared too he could probably have appeared scared.

But he didn't care.

"Hey, now," said Adam, "You don't even know me.."

"Let's get to know you.." said the one on the right.. or maybe the left.

Adam's hands closed around the handle to the trash can's lid.

"Yes," said Adam, "Let's."

Five minutes later Adam Smith strolled out of the alley way and into a motel a couple of blocks away, a slanted mess of broken windows that appeared to lean drunkenly against the nearby buildings. The clerk was tired and balding, and appeared to grip something beneath the counter when Adam appeared. He only released it when Adam brought out his wallet and started to pay for a room.

The best you could say about it was that there weren't any cockroaches. In sight. Adam tossed his hold all onto the bed and moved to the window, struggling to break through the layer of dust and grime before finally just levering it open and letting the fresh air in.

The sun was already set on Jump City by this point, and by the sounds of it the nocturnal wild-life was beginning to stir. Crime – the quiet, petty brand – still lived in Jump City. A hero with his mind to it would do something about that.

Adam Smith had been a hero once. Once upon a time.

He wasn't here to save the city though. He wasn't even here to destroy it.

He had come to Jump City to find a woman who looked very much like his mother. And what he would do when he accomplished this goal not even Adam could have said.

But he wasn't a hero. He was just someone with a job to do.

And heaven help anyone who got in his way.


End file.
